Monday, 29 April 2013

Richie Havens’ final studio album is vintage in sound,
lyrical preoccupation and the ability to take the classic songs of others and stamp
his indelible mark upon them. This latter quality oozes its aural charm on Pete
Townsend’s Won’t Get Fooled Again, a
song so steeped in The Who’s musical iconography you wouldn’t think it possible
that a version could break those signature shackles – but Havens wraps it in
his inimitable vocal and strummed acoustic guitar, the lyrics sadly as apt
today as when written, as are the sentiments Havens presents from others and
his own pen throughout this wise reflection on a world he has documented for
over 40 years,

But the world looks
just the same

And history ain’t
changed

Opener The Key,
supported as are a number of others by a cello accompaniment, is beautiful – quite simply
beautiful – and the lyrics embrace the optimism for a better world that has
walked in tandem with Havens’ anger at the way we have treated ourselves and this
world,

Somewhere there is a
chance

To escape from tribal
dance

No one breaks the
common trance, of global glance

At freedom’s plate

Somewhere there are no
lies

The truth and beauty
still survives

And all the days of
our lives

The sun rises, just to
show us the way

Just between you and
me

Follower Say It Isn’t
So is similarly gentle as a song, and the cello again joins in with its
softening as the lyrics this time are less hopeful though still tinged with the
disbelief that in its expression suggests something better,

Say it isn’t so that
people must bend

To this war without
end

I can’t believe it, I
can’t believe it

I can’t believe it, do
you believe?

And then the third is Townsend’s anthemic declaration of
regret and fight, encapsulating the battle Havens has sung and fought
throughout his life, so sadly ended.

Fourth Standing On The
Water continues the righteous ruefulness, the rhetorical questioning
perhaps reflecting more sagacious resignation than revolution, but nonetheless
pertinent for that genuine concern,

Why do we surround
ourselves with houses and big cars

Trying to make out we
got it made

When nothing really
belongs to us

We’re only passing
through

We’re part of a masquerade

Fifth is a lovely cover of Citizen Cope’s [Clarence
Greenwood] Hurricane Water, and sixth
If I is another Havens’ original with
a sweet simplicity that exemplifies all that is peaceful and introspective
about this album’s music.

Sixth, title track Nobody
Left To Crown, is classic Havens, the guitar strummed vigorously with those
speedy oscillating rhythms, and the narrative offers its mix of hope and
criticism,

What if politicians
were all good guys?

Oh Lord, don’t we wish
they were

We would not be so
dependent

On courts of law that
make us

All feel like dependents
sometimes

and what stands out in this song is Havens’ mash-up [of
sorts] where he segues a few satirical bars of Home On The Range into the song,

Be it ever so humble,
there’s no place like home

Home, home on the
range

Where the fear and the
antidotes play

Where seldom is heard,
an encouraging word

And our leaders do
nothing all day

Ninth is a cover of Jackson Browne’s Lives In The Balance, and although written about American
involvement in El Salvador, its focus on political corruption is still apt in
the larger world-view Havens is presenting throughout this album, but also his
specific focus on America itself.

Eleventh Fates
sees Havens adopt a more caustic criticism with his linking of capitalism and
the power-elite to slavery, and it is clear he hasn’t forsaken his life-long political/philosophical
ethos,

He’s got his factories,
he’s got his slaves

He’s got his prophets,
he owns our cave

He has his prisons, he
has his cage

He has his judges,
they have our fate

This ethical protest is continued in the cover of the Peter
Yarrow’s [Peter, Paul and Mary] song The
Great Mandala (The Wheel of Life) which is a complex lyric, it seems to me,
about punishment and justice. The album finishes on Havens’ song One More Day, a calm and poetic
rumination, proffering both secular and spiritual love and peacefulness, a
fitting testament to end the album as well as honour Havens’ life as a musician
and person,

Sunday, 28 April 2013

I was saddened to hear of the death of Richie Havens, who
passed, aged 72, on the 22nd April. This is a sentiment and line
becoming all too frequent of late, but not surprising as musicians with whom I
grew up as a teenager – so themselves already or just being established musically
as young adults – are of an age where this will be more common.

Having been away in the Lakes last week I have only just
found out. So the sadness is deepened a little by the fact that Haven’s death
did not register more widely. If at home I would have ‘heard’ as I touch
base daily with music sites for reviews and information, but even though I was able
to go to a local cafe to use their WiFi for quickly checking emails, and I got
a daily newspaper and watched the TV news, his death hadn’t registered enough
to be reported. Lesser ‘popular’ stars would, I’m sure, have created
larger if less distinguished ripples.

Quite by coincidence, I had during the week been thinking
about my musical Top Fifty [see – even when away from home and not writing on
the blog I am somewhat consumed by the insular world it provides for me] and
wondering if Richie Havens should have a place there. He is without doubt a
favourite artist of mine. It is his distinctive vocal – at times quite a growl,
but at others a soft and resonating folk vocal – and of course the guitar
playing, open-tuned with a famously, aggressively strummed style. This style
was brought to my attention and so many others with his opening performance at Woodstock – obviously through the film
version – and his mesmerising and commanding stage presence with, as we now
know, impromptu jamming as he was asked by the organisers to extend his performance as other acts were held up in traffic [if you are from another planet and haven't seen/heard, check out the stunning Freedom here].

It isn’t his death that sways me to include Alarm Clock in my Top Fifty, but it does
provide me the opportunity to honour him by its inclusion. This is one of the
first few albums with which I grew up musically and in many other respects, so it
was played a considerable amount. It is beautiful – the song I am listening to
as I write is the self-penned [with Roth and Margoleff] End of the Season, with its unusual, for this album, orchestral
accompaniment, acknowledged on the album as a string arrangement by Bill
Shepherd, but surely it is a Moog Synthesiser dominating the background. It is
a lovely song with Havens’ deep vocal and the heightened drama of that
arrangement.

The title track is quite a bluesy number, Havens’ signature
rhythm driving the beat and Paul Williams providing some funky lead guitar. It
has a jamming/live element that appealed particularly then, reminiscent of the Woodstock performance [the cd version
runs at 7.17 to accentuate this feel, compared with the vinyl at 5.17].

Havens was a great interpreter of others’ songs, especially
the Beatles, and Alarm Clock opens
with a beautiful cover of the beautiful George Harrison number Here Comes The Sun. Third track Younger Men Grow Older is another
Havens/Roth song and its apparent gentle lyricism about age and wisdom and
hopes for the future encapsulates perfectly the ideals of the Woodstock
generation, that initial sweet focus tempered ruefully by reflections on
the destruction of war and assault on the environment. Fourth track Girls Don’t Run Away, written by Havens,
is gorgeous, if plaintive, and lyrically also reflects well on preoccupations
of this generation, here the ‘generation gap’ and a mother who does not understand/appreciate
her daughter, and an urge that the daughter should stand up for herself and
seek independence. Such musical folk excellence was heightened by a storytelling
which so deeply tapped into the contemporary listeners’ thoughts and feelings.

Thursday, 18 April 2013

An outstanding album, as one can rightly expect of Steve
Earle. Worldly worn and worldly wise, politically astute and acerbic, can rock
your fucking socks off, passionate and romantic.

A song that has been given quite a bit of attention from this latest release is Burnin’ It Down where Earle imagines
torching a Wallmart store. Whilst the sentiment is angry enough, there is a
beauty in the song itself and a resignation in the empathised rationale for the
act which tempers the idea somehow. What I mean is there’s more pathos in the ‘why’
of the thought than considering the violence of the act.

Allison Moorer adds great harmony, and accordion, to the
slight TexMex of That All You Got.
This, Love’s Gonna Blow My Way – with
violin by Eleanor Whitmore – and After
Mardi Gras are a trio of fine songs written by Steve for his appearances as
a character in the equally fine New Orleans-set TV drama Treme.

Earle’s weary Texas drawl is such a distinctive sound, and
when he talks low and painfully through Invisible
– a song about being itinerant/dislocated/disconnected – there is such an
authenticity it hurts. This quality is heightened with the album closer, the genuinely emotive Remember Me, a song Earle has written for his baby son, John Henry,
as he a father of 58 anticipates the inevitable separation his age will cause
so much earlier than he would have wanted. It could be a maudlin moment, but
the honesty with which Earle has always written and sung his songs wrests this excellent one from that possibility.

On a bootleg of a recent Berlin gig, Earle talks about
having kids in his mid-fifties, and he says he ‘started doing the math’ and figured
out ‘the best I can hope for is to just try to really take really good care of
myself and try to be around long enough to see this one grow up’. I’m sure John
Henry will want his father around for as much as possible of the journey ahead, but what a poignant, loving song and
sentiment to fill that void when the math does exert its inevitability.

Here’s a funky and rootsy blues band that exudes a musical
cool which, excusing the oxymoron, sweats off the knowing journeymen-warmth of
a trio of fine musicians and a singer whose voice was brought onto seven
tracks in their previous album and now gets a ‘w/Mush’ nicknamecheck on current
cover to signal her significant contribution to their overall sound.

There are fluid to fiery guitar rhythms and licks from guitarist Robin Barrett who also writes all and sings on some
songs; Curtis Johnson is the powerhouse drummer; Kit Kuhlmann is on lively bass,
and Michelle ‘Mush’ Morgan adds the requisite welcome sass with her vocals.

Good blues is good blues and if you like that you’ll like
this but beyond such neat symmetry there is a special sound with Coyote Kings
which I’ll take back as the most apt description to the previously mentioned
fluidity. It is largely in the guitar sounds which are laid back in essence
even when emerging from that state of blues grace with their wilder calm.
Perhaps it’s a distinctive tension, and something embraced in the songwriting
of Barrett where his style is blues refined rather than blues defined.

Opener Nasty Habit
is a thumping [wonderful bass] Stevie Rayesque number, the guitar oozing those
refined riffs and Morgan singing her sexually charged suggestiveness. Second Best You Couldn’t Do is smooth again,
rhythmic riffs bending blues notes sweetly. On third Hard To Be a Man, Barrett demonstrates his own emotionally infused
vocal that can growl with conviction. A great start, and this third number in
particular reminds a little of the Mike Bloomfield school of cool blues.

Fifth Baby’s Gone
is an emotive ballad, guitar wailing and Mush moaning in another sweet
symmetry. Seventh That Hot Daddy
takes it’s Time of the Season opening
beat and then scorches it with guitar-bent burns, Morgan so close on the mic
you look over your shoulder hopefully whilst listening. Eighth Afternoon Sun has Barrett slowing the
mood and singing a gentle number, simple in its summery effectiveness. Tenth Walkin’ In The Fog is another slowed
blues ballad, this one an instrumental that evokes Gary Moore’s sensitive
playing.

The album finishes on Am
I Gettin’ Wise and I’d say Barrett’s rhetorical question is answered in the
natural wisdom of this assured blues experience. A lovely album from start to
finish, and can be bought here.

Monday, 15 April 2013

As I wrote recently when reviewing Quintessence albums, I
had ordered three related cds which have now arrived and been enjoyed:
Quintessence – Rebirth, Live at
Glastonbury; Shiva’s Quintessence – Only
Love Can Save Us; Allan Mostert – Inside
World.

The Quintessence reunion and Glastonbury performance is
superb: testament to brilliant musicianship that will always endure; Shiva
Jones with keyboardist Rundra Beauvert revisit Quintessence music to recreate and
reinvent beautifully, Shiva’s vocal such a key element of the band’s memorable
sound and as dynamic as ever [with additional ‘cosmic’ tracks], and Mostert’s
is the most individual, still steeped in the spiritual for musical inspiration,
and an ambient soundscape [‘psychedelic essence music’] that is gloriously rich
and aurally enriching. As a fan, I’m bound to be pleased in these continuations
of a sound that has always appealed, but I genuinely recommend on their innate
qualities.

I got the first two through amazon; the Mostert is burnt to
order and comes neatly packaged from Burning Shed here.

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This blog is essentially for music reviews, including live gigs. Frequently heavy on 60s/70s nostalgia, the time of my musical growing-up, there is also an eclectic and contemporary range. In addition I fuel a commitment to posting themed album covers for the simple challenge and fun of it - as I've started, I'll keep going. Enjoy.